“Unchained, ain’t nothing stays the same
Unchained, and you hit the ground running”
As a student, textbooks are a fact of life. In the “old days”, you took your course schedule to the bookstore and hoped you could figure out what books went with what courses and prayed that you had enough cash to purchase the needed materials. With any luck, you had enough leftover for a candy bar.
Books were both horribly expensive and heavy. You waddled out of the bookstore with your booty, stopped at the nearest bench, and gathered up the strength to carry your load to your final destination. If you were fortunate, most of the material was useful. If not, you had some expensive bookshelf dressing for the next 20 years.
I was listening to a story on NPR this morning about conversion to e-texbooks at Northwest Missouri State. Unbelievably, the administration there has determined that all books will be issued in electronic format. Granted, this decision was made easier because they issue a laptop to every student. However, this seemed to me like a tremendous leap.
I’m all for electronic versions of books. It helps when you’re searching for a passage and certainly makes carrying everything in one bag more plausible. However, the actual reading is a tremendous strain for me. Older eyes make it difficult to focus on the screen for too long and you just can’t lean back in a chair and read with a laptop.
One of the items mentioned in the news story was that “publishers” have started to adapt their books to meet the demands of the digital age. Instead of merely rendering text, they are beginning to include multimedia video clips in addition to words and pictures. I hate to say it but this gave me a vision of an academic world without instructors. Then again, I also had a vision of Grammy awards being presented for best adaptation of an original text with the statue going to a calculus book. Bleah! Begone visions!
The reality is that change is happening. Books need to adapt to shorter attention spans and new methods of instruction delivery. The meaning of words are still relevant and I still have to understand the material in order to pass my class. Until I get that neural implant from Neuromancer that allows me to jack into cyberspace, I’m going to have to read, digest, and comprehend. I may be unchained from the printed book but I still need to hit the ground running.
So That's Life? 
Spread Your Wings
02/28/2009*** NOTE ***
I’m deviating from my usual tech-oriented content today.
Today has been perhaps the saddest day of my life. My best friend, Ryan, passed away after suffering a heart attack brought on by a genetic condition.
His wife, family, and I have spent the last few days at his bedside in what turned out to be a futile vigil. The hours of lonely solitude were broken and punctuated by bad news from the doctors and overwhelming sadness. There was quiet conversation accompanied by the constant hum of monitors. There was the routine of the ICU nurses. And now he is gone.
As a general rule, you can’t pick friends. A best friend is a completely different animal where circumstances throw you together and one day you realize that something very different exists between the two of you. Something that you never quite put your finger on.
For nearly forty years, I’ve had a friend who I knew counted on me with a steadfastness that goes beyond words; I did the same for him. It was never a matter of proximity but rather one of empathy. It was rooted in the knowledge that there was no physical distance that would prevent either of us from coming to the others aid.
In the quiet periods during the week, I often reflected on what my friend had meant to me and to others. I recounted stories from school, work, and life in general. I thought about the many different people who had come to visit and what motivated them to overcome the natural apprehension to visit a dying acquaintance. Although each of them had a different experience and story. It occurred to me that there was a common thread.
I know that it sounds trite to say that he touched people’s lives, but it was true. Without exception, every person had at least one story that revolved around Ryan teaching them a valuable lesson. Whether it was the former boss who had learned the value of humility or the special education teachers he taught how to respect their charges, he made a tangible impact on all these people.
As for me, Ryan challenged me to be a better person in just about everything I did. Whether it was school, sports, work, and especially ethics, he innately knew what I wanted and found a way to get me to meet my own expectations. He never dictated, he never scolded, but he always motivated. He set a great example and just let me come along at a speed that was comfortable for me.
If I’m lucky, I will miss my friend until the day that I die. That’s because by missing him, I honor him and what he meant to me. Good bye friend.
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